The disclosed embodiments of the present invention relate to functional safety, and more particularly, to a data processing system with logic functional self-checking and an associated data processing method.
Functional safety includes the detection of malfunctions and taking proper actions before any harm is done, and is therefore a key issue for certain applications such as automotive electronic systems. For example, the system has to get itself into a safe state in time before a hazard occurs. Hence, it is necessary to apply a functional checking procedure to guarantee the correctness of a normal function during a normal system operation. However, the run time to achieve a complete diagnostic coverage required by the system may be long. In a case where a predetermined amount of the input data can be fully processed within a target timing budget, the quality of the functional safety may be influenced due to an incomplete diagnostic coverage achieved within the target timing budget. To achieve a complete diagnostic coverage required by the system, more time budgets are needed, thus affecting the performance of the system.